


Misery Loves Company

by morethanprinceofcats



Category: La Légende du Roi Arthur - Savio & Skread & Zaho/Chouquet/Attia
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-21 02:09:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morethanprinceofcats/pseuds/morethanprinceofcats
Summary: Maleagant overpowers Lancelot, and in desperation, Guinevere makes a bargain with him for Lancelot's life.
Relationships: Guinevere/Lancelot (La Légende du Roi Arthur), Guinevere/Maleagant (La Légende du Roi Arthur)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Misery Loves Company

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



Guinevere’s heart was trapped in her throat, and all of the clutching at it in the world, all of the screaming, could not pluck it, pull it, force it out. It was as trapped as she was in Maleagant’s chains. There was nothing she could do but watch as the tide of the battle turned and Lancelot slowed from a cut in his thigh, a stab in his shoulder. 

_Please_ , she thought mindlessly. _I could have borne anything but this. Anything but that_ he _does not survive._

Maleagant was laughing madly with glee. He sounded like a guest at a wedding after a night of mead and peach nectar and dancing beneath garlands of flowers. And it made him ghastlier as he lifted his sword now and swung. Guinevere had been screaming unceasingly. She did not understand at first why Maleagant stopped now, when he hadn’t earlier.

Lancelot, on his knees, blood trickling down his armor, was yelling too.

“My queen! You cannot do this,” he cried. The heartbreak in his eyes, the twist of his mouth, yanked out her heart where nothing else could have. “My queen, I am not…”

Maleagant backhanded him in the mouth.

“I simply _can’t_ abide a poor loser,” he said with a light heart, turning bright eyes to Guinevere. “Come, my pet! Finish what you were saying?”

It was only now, the second time she spoke, that she understood what she’d said.

“I’ll be yours,” she said quickly, tears filling her eyes. To never see Camelot, _Arthur_ again… But she could give those things up, if the world were not emptied of Lancelot. He was all the world had shrunk to. “Only spare him. Spare him, and… I won’t resist. I won’t run, or… I’ll be yours, if you only…”

Maleagant cupped her face and purred.

“So it’s you she loves.”

He looked into her eyes as he said it, not at Lancelot at all. But either he still heard him, or he had some second sight, because as Lancelot tried to get to his feet, Maleagant countered him with sword again, and this time, he had him with his blade to his throat.

“Too bad you don’t deserve it,” he said. 

“Please! I beg of you. As a - wedding present.” Guinevere’s eyes wavered away from Maleagant’s. It was not the way black magic had corrupted the left side of his face, leaving it like a death’s head; it was the satisfaction that burned in his unflinching long stare. Even when her eyes met Lancelot’s and silently pleaded for his understanding.

“Guinevere,” said Lancelot, in a voice as broken as her heart was. “Anything but this.”

But Maleagant would have her either way, didn’t he see that now? He would make her his concubine, his wife if he could find a priest who did not care she was married already. His spoils of war, either way; but to watch Lancelot die and then belong to Maleagant anyway? God be good, never.

“Anything but _this_ ,” she corrected him in a hollow voice. She struggled to raise her voice, although this dungeon in which Maleagant held her prisoner was intimate enough to raise sword clashing to the noise of thunderstorms, a whisper to the volume of a chorus. “Anything in my power to give you, anything that you desire of me will be yours, so long as you spare his life.”

Maleagant smiled at her, and then he kicked Lancelot in the stomach. Armor protected him from the worst of it, but Lancelot heaved in pain anyway and fell backwards. Guinevere blanched and cried out for him.

But Maleagant had a purpose in this. Lancelot had fallen near enough a dungeon wall for Maleagant to chain him, too. “You vow it to me, darling?” he asked casually.

The candle flames flickered then, eerily cold, harsh, and bright, as if black magic were responsible for that too. Wax droplets like slugs told of how long she had been here this unending, agonizing night.

Lancelot was whispering with what remained of his breath for her to take it back, but Guinevere sat against the wall, her back straight and proud, and said unhesitatingly, “I vow it, Prince of Gore. I will be yours…. As long as Lancelot du Lac lives.”

The somber silence was punctuated by the sound of rapidly given applause. It felt obscene. Maleagant stopped clapping when he reached her and cupped her chin approvingly. “Such regal posture, my queen,” he congratulated her. She shut her eyes and shuddered when he ran his hand down her throat and generously over her breasts, then up again.

“Shall we shake on it? Or, oh no,” he said, as though musing, then clamped his hand over her face and kissed her, hard. 

She bore the kiss more easily than the rattling of chains and the scrape of mail on stone as Lancelot raged and struggled to reach them.

Maleagant was frowning idly when he pulled away from her, his eyes shut a moment longer.

“Guinevere, a vow is very sacred,” he said to her. 

“And I meant mine!” 

“But you tasted a little insincere,” he said with a pout, even though he walked towards the center of the room to noisily kick away Lancelot’s sword, which had already been out of his grasp. It flashed silver for a moment in the candlelight before going still and dim in an unlit patch of the dungeon. Then, for good measure, Maleagant approached her knight, and laid his sword against his throat.

He opened his mouth to utter more threats or remonstrations; but Guinevere, anticipating them, shouted, “No! No, I wasn’t!” She had moved as far away from the wall as she could, reaching for them. Her chains gave her a wide berth, but she could no more reach the center of the room than Lancelot could. A river might as well have been between them. Or a country. “Return to me, my lord, I will show you,” she begged.

She tasted bile in her mouth and swallowed hard. She could not afford to lose what was at stake if she displeased him again. But if he tasted it he gave no sign, and Guinevere forced herself to lean upward into the pressure of his lips, to oblige him when he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Automatically she mimicked the kisses of her marriage: she and Arthur when all was new between them. Somewhere deep inside her, where she cried as she defiled her marriage, she shut a door and turned a key. If she had not betrayed Arthur in the garden, thinking it was Lancelot she had met, then Maleagant would never have had her. This was all her fault, all her fault. The fixing of it was hers as well.

She might have managed, if not for Lancelot pounding his mailed fist onto the floor, screaming for Maleagant to unhand her; her skin crawled and she pulled away and bowed her head with an uncontrollable rush of tears as Maleagant turned away from her.

“Hmm,” he said, running his fingers through her tangled hair. “You need schooling, love. And that _knight_ of yours,” he added with scathing criticism. “He has no respect for your decisions, does he? Lancelot!”

“Lancelot,” she echoed weakly. “Please… Let me do this.”

Maleagant _giggled_ , clasping his hands together. If he’d been standing, she thought he might have stomped his feet for joy.

“Don’t you hear how she _wants_ me? You can’t separate true love. Isn’t that supposed to be one of your knights’ vows, to care about that sort of thing?”

She had no idea if he was serious or not. Sometimes, with Maleagant, one could not tell. But she met Lancelot’s sweet eyes through the dim pale glow of the candles. For a moment, she was afraid he had somehow died, in spite of her efforts. He was so still, collapsed on the dungeon floor, and it could be the reflection of the flames in his eyes that gave them the appearance of movement. But then she saw, weakly, that he nodded. 

He understood. He knew what it would do to her if he died. And his death would not protect her, either. Perhaps, one day, they would be freed, when Arthur and the rest of the Round Table came for them. But they had to be alive to see it.

Maleagant pulled her upward by the hair, breaking her eye contact with her love. He wrapped one arm around her waist, and bent her backwards over it in another pushy kiss. The one was wetter. She had a chilling feeling that he was trying to be as loud as possible, rather than trying to enjoy himself.

Or that that was his idea of enjoying himself.

“You see,” he panted when he broke it, tearing his eyes from Guinevere to look at Lancelot with triumph. “You _see?_ ”

“Yes,” said Lancelot, in a flat voice. “I can see from here.”

For a moment, Guinevere almost laughed. The absurdity of it, to laugh. But Lancelot was not broken. Lancelot was not dead, _and_ he was not broken. She’d saved him and they would survive. 

And no night lasted forever, unbroken by dawn. Dawn would still come.

But Maleagant pursed his lips a long time in displeasure, and Guinevere was reminded, soberingly, that the night was far from over.

“Guinevere, my sweet,” he said, running his fingertip down her jawline, and returning his eyes to hers. “Tell me again the substance of your vow.”

“To do all you ask and give you all you desire,” she said, promptly, and mechanically. “To stay here, in exchange for Lancelot’s life.”

He clasped her hand, intertwining their fingers, as though they were young lovers. It made her nearly reel with disgust.

“Yes, well, you see,” he began in a conversational tone. “You see, you aren’t being very _convincing,_ Guinevere,” he said; his tone became menacing, and he forced her hand back unnaturally on her wrist, making her gasp suddenly in pain and shock. “I would love to believe you, my sweet, but I’m afraid you kiss me as though you’d rather be dead. And if I _wanted_ to love your corpse, that would be easy. As it happens I want you _alive_ , my love. I want _you_.”

He gripped her wrist afterward immediately, rubbing the pain out of it and kissing it.

She must be brave, she told herself. But fate had given Guinevere no magic swords. She kissed Maleagant deeply, clutching him closer with her other free hand. She heard a guttural, wordless sound of despair from the other side of the dungeon; a wanton exhale of delight against her lips. If she pretended she were deaf, it was almost easy: though Maleagant had been cruel when kissing her against her will, this he reacted to with sincerity and passion. She simply must pretend he was Arthur, or Lancelot… Or that she loved him… Or that she was someone else entirely, and this was not her body, not her mouth pressed against the man who had terrorized her home, threatened all that she loved, and demanded her soul.

She heard Lancelot groaning through clenched teeth as Maleagant’s hands traveled over her body. When the shudder ran through her, she disguised it by leaning into him. He could not say he was displeased with her now.

Soon he would depart with her, she thought with an increased desperation. It would not be as hard as it was now when they were in a bed, in the dark… Lancelot out of sight, safe in this dungeon, tucked, safely, into her heart. She wagered herself if she could bite her tongue, she could even satisfy him quickly; she was, after all, not a terrified virgin anymore, but the wife of a good man. 

This train of thought ended poorly, when questing hands that had run down her hips found the hem of her skirt, and with a ferocious and uncalled-for display of strength, ripped it. Guinevere cried out against his lips and twisted away. Maleagant was smiling at her beatifically, and before she could grab his hands and unsuccessfully try to push them away, he had made the rip higher, moving it almost to her thigh.

“Unhand her, you bastard!” shouted Lancelot.

“So did the two of you ever…?” Maleagant asked conversationally, pulling Guinevere closer by lewdly seizing her bare hips beneath the skirt, wrestling her closer as she struggled to pull back, trying to catch her breath. “While in Arthur’s own court? Is this something he’s seen yet?”

“No, no, no,” Guinevere said in a sharp exhale as she fought him every step of the way. “You… You… I promised…”

“Mm, you did,” he said, running his tongue up the entire length of her neck with one hand in her hair to yank back her head to expose it. “And you’re going to make good on that promise. _Anything I desire._ ”

“Doesn’t - this - _God-forsaken ruin_ have a bed?” Guinevere pushed and shoved him back. A jolt of nausea ran through her when his fingers cupped her between her legs - only for a moment before she wrestled with control again. 

“Oh, how thoughtless of me,” said Maleagant, getting up from his knees. He unclasped his cloak with one hand and shook it out, laying it with one flamboyant gesture on the stone floor. He gestured with his hand elegantly. “After you, my lady.”

“No,” she said, through clenched teeth - with clenched legs. She scooted herself back against the wall. “Not like this. You _monster._ ”

“Ohhh. Twice-faithless little Guinevere,” he said, clucking with sympathy as he squatted beside her, pulling a knife from inside his doublet and hitting his open palm with the flat of the blade. “I could remind you of your oath in so many permanent ways, but let’s start with his eyes, shall we? Which one do you like less? I’ll be generous. I’ll try to leave you your favorite.”

Fear tightened her throat. “You… you wouldn’t really do it…”

“If I never saw you again, my queen, it would be a small price to pay for your safety,” Lancelot pushed the sentence out quickly. The worst part was that he meant it, and saying it barely affected him. He said it to comfort her. Their eyes locked again, and there was such a self-sacrificing compassion in his eyes; all their fear was for her. She could even see a partial smile on his lips. Briefly, she envisioned it, and knew he would hardly make a sound: all his concern would be to make the moment painless for her to experience, so that she never knew how much he suffered for her.

“Mmm. Touching,” said Maleagant. “And true.”

He was getting to his feet, she could see that. She could not let him get there, but she hadn’t found her voice yet. Desperately, she clung to his knee, pulling him back down, grabbing at him.

“Oh, _now_ you want it?” Maleagant laughed, rubbing his thigh where she’d touched him. “Go on, my love. Our marriage bed awaits.” He kicked up a corner of the cloak playfully.

She could hardly feel her limbs, except to note how badly she was trembling, as she 

“Pull up your skirt,” he commanded. Guinevere hesitated, but obeyed him. He was still standing, and still toying with his awful knife; she couldn’t take any chances. “Are you planning to please me with your knees? Higher, please!”

He got down on the floor again and pushed her legs open wide with his bare hands, making her exhale in fear. There was a startling hunger in the living half of his face; the skull side always looked ravenous. 

“I would have started with the fingers anyway,” he said with a cruel smile in his voice. “I want him to see this. Oh, Lancelot du _Lac?_ Can you see this?”

Lancelot hesitated to respond, for just a moment. His voice was like steel. “Yes,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“Tell me what you see.”

Guinevere shut her own eyes.

“....The queen of the Bretons,” he said grudgingly.

“You take a vow of celibacy for your Grail Quest, so I hear,” Maleagant continued to walk his fingers up and down her thighs. “Does that mean you abstain from _everything?_ Or did you please yourself while thinking about _this?”_

Guinevere made a sharp, involuntary noise as he began to caress her; slowly at first, and then with an insistence that perverted all sweetness. She stared up at the ceiling, blinking tears back rapidly, her breath coming in faster. 

“ _Bon chevalier,_ we await your reply.”

Maleagant rubbed his index finger against her at a greedy pace, feeling for all the world like pain even though it brought no injury, and it was not blood she felt; but Lancelot’s voice in the darkness was the greater torment, the far greater torment.

“Yes,” he said.

“Mm, to which?”

“I… I thought of her. I _thought_ of her.” The shame in his voice gave sound to all the shame in her soul, and Guinevere let out a sob. 

“My beautiful…” He kissed her on the stomach, on the hipbone. “My beautiful, _beautiful_ Guinevere… I’m so close to being jealous…. I think it’s _him_ that makes you wet, my love, and not me at all... Oh, well…” 

He removed his hand, and she realized she had been holding her breath as she let out a ragged sigh of relief. Then he pulled open her bodice, and, growing impatient, took out his knife again to crudely cut it open further. She tried to stifle the sounds she made, but every new motion made her exhales come out as gasps.

“All the better to have the audience!” he said, laughing as he bared her breasts for Lancelot’s enjoyment, it seemed, as much as his own. Or possibly not, for soon he was kissing her. He seemed to forget to be cruel as he took in the scent and taste of her, the softness of her skin. Guinevere shivered as his lips explored her body, knowing this time she could not disguise from either herself or Lancelot that some of her response was pleasure. _Pleasure, but not happiness._ It was the worst form of despair she had ever known. She wished she could no longer feel her body, but it was thoroughly alive, awake to every agony of Maleagant’s embrace.

She forced her gaze across the dungeon to Lancelot. She did not want him to see this, but she wanted less for him to despise her. She feared he could not think of her ever again except with disgust. But to her shame, and more greatly to the part of her soul that could still feel comfort, she could see only how much he loved her: his eyes, bright with tears, at least until her own blurred her vision, looked into her heart, and knew nothing but her misery. 

Maleagant pushed away from her, but then he seized her hand and guided it to his breeches possessively. She could not recoil; his grip was too strong. He pressed her palm against him and bid her feel his arousal for her. Against her wishes and her better judgment, she wondered if he would be so stiff if Lancelot had not been here to suffer beside her.

“Unfasten them,” he panted. She did as she was commanded. “Now, ask for it.”

“Please,” said Guinevere hollowly. 

“Not very specific,” he said, but smiled briefly at the mute look of desperation she gave him. “But you are a lady, after all.”

She went rigid as he lay on top of her. The floor was uncomfortable, even with the cloak; his body was heavy and still half armored. But Guinevere was absurdly grateful to feel anything as compassionate as pain, and the groan she gave when he thrust inside her and it hurt was almost a prayer of gratitude.

These comforts, too, were stripped away.

“So it is Lancelot that makes you wet, hm?” he asked breathlessly as he used her. “A pity he is so far, far away, or I’d let him prepare you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The two of you? Do you wish Arthur was so generous?”

“Stop,” Guinevere whispered, without thinking of who she was speaking to. Maleagant twisted her hips and penetrated her more deeply. Instinctively, her back arched, and he clutched her closer, moved faster, enjoying the sounds she started to make; she bit each one off as short as she could make it, but she could not deaden her senses. It seemed that her heightened state of fear made her sensitive, as though her preparation to feel pain had also prepared her for other things. “Isn’t that _good_ , my queen? Would you like it if Lancelot and I took turns? I could bring him longer chains.”

“Stop,” she moaned.

“For God’s sake!” Lancelot shouted.

“Blasphemy!” Maleagant managed to laugh, his voice quivering. Gradually, he began to pace himself more slowly; Guinevere could do nothing but whimper and squirm. The hope that she could take the kind of initiative it would require to make him finish more quickly receded into nothingness. “Ah, your queen needs you, Lancelot,” he said through gritted teeth. “Why don’t you tell her you’ll save her - how everything will be all right -”

“It will… It will be,” he said faintly. Unbidden, heart fluttering for him, she imagined his hand in hers, her lips on his; but no, those memories were polluted as soon as she thought of them like this, she did not want them now. “You’ll be safe, and protected… This demon will be dead, and you will be saved… I wish… Forgive me that I could not, could not…”

“That’s helping,” Maleagant pronounced with satisfaction; “oh, my love, you feel so _good._ Guinevere, tell me how good it is,” he whispered into her ear as Lancelot’s voice failed.

 _If I don’t, who will he hurt first? And how?_ she wondered, and yet any twinge of pleasure felt worse than any pain could. But it was not herself for whom she feared injury. So Guinevere bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, and then she moaned, “It feels good. So good...“

“And what do you want?” 

“Love me. I want you to love me...”

“Oh my love,” he panted. He went faster now, at least. “If only you did. But fortunately you _do_ \- _love - Lancelot_ …”

Guinevere let out a cry. He had slipped his hand between the two of them to fondle her insistently, and she could not escape it.

“Lancelot,” she cried. “Lancelot, forgive me, forgive me…”

The sound of her lover weeping for her was her reward and her comfort as Maleagant forced her to climax. She bit her lip and clenched her hand in his hair painfully tightly, but he was basking in it, urging her onward, leaving her body sore, her voice ragged. There was nothing unwelcome about this pleasure for him; he was famished for it. He was half deranged when he spent himself. Afterward he stayed inside her, stroking her hair, and he whispered to the two of them, “To think you have never shared this moment before. Fate is so cruel to lovers.”

In the end, the greatest kindness he did her was most likely intended as another act of cruelty: he left her with a kiss on her cheek and the chains still on her wrists, lying exhausted on the soiled cloak.

“It seems a shame to separate you two… So I will let you have tonight. Perhaps your souls can intermingle,” said Maleagant, as the dungeon door swung shut.

Guinevere could hear her own frightened breath. The candles were still burning; at least she could still see him. Their eyes met in the gloom, and she blinked her tears away, desperate that she should still be able to see him.

“At least,” Lancelot said, his voice haggard, “we still have souls.”

Guinevere swallowed. Her throat felt dry and painful, but weak laughter tumbled from her mouth regardless.

“Yes,” she said. “He can’t touch those.”

“No,” he agreed, softly.

And neither could they touch each other. But it seemed the candles flared a little more brightly as she regarded him from her side of their dungeon. Guinevere lay on her side in a position that mirrored his and extended her hand, as he did his own. 

Whatever morning brought with it, morning still would come.


End file.
